A "purge" has been defined as
"exclusion from political party, government, or other
institution, with or without arrest, of elements hostile or
objectionable to leadership. It is also sometimes applied to
mass arrest and imprisonment or execution of categories of
population held to be 'socially dangerous' " (Rigby 1964, p.
566). This definition is broad enough to regard the
exclusion of several individuals or a few prominent leaders
as a purge. For our purposes, we favor a somewhat restricted
definition, regarding as a purge only the mass exclusion or
mass expulsion of members or leaders. Also, for our
purposes, we are interested only in the purges of party
members and leaders, not the elimination of "socially
dangerous" persons outside the party structure.

Both party purges and party splits
involve the loss of activists to the party. But, in the case
of a party split, the loss of activists is considered
to be voluntary and in a purge the departure is
involuntary. A purge may be implemented by expulsion
from party membership, imprisonment, exile from the country,
or even death in the extreme case. We do not draw
distinctions as to how the purge is carried out or what fate
befalls those purged, for these types of variation are more
likely associated with the political environment within
which the party operates and are not thought to be
indicators of party coherence.

At first glance, a purge might be
regarded as an obvious denial of party coherence, for it
means that strong disagreement among activists must exist to
elicit the purge. But, in another light, the purging of
disagreeables produces a more coherent party thereafter.
Perhaps a more appropriate conception of the consequences of
purges for a party is their effect on creating adherence to
party policy. First, a party that has so little tolerance
for disagreement that it resorts to expelling contrary
members would be expected to have a relatively high degree
of coherence initially. Second, the use or threat of the
purge as a weapon invites members to think about the
consequences of disagreement. While the absence of purges in
a party is not a necessary indicator of low coherence, the
presence of purges seems a sufficient condition for high
coherence afterward.

Operational Definition.
Instances of involuntary departure from the party during our
time period qualify to be coded as "purges" only if they
involve mass exclusion or mass expulsion of members or
leaders. In the case of a purge of party members, we
interpret "mass" to mean at least 10 percent of the total
membership; in the case of party leaders, we interpret
"mass" to mean at least 25 percent of the particular
leadership group in which the purge occurs. The scoring
matrix applied to coding BV1006 further distinguishes
between major and minor purges and the frequency of purges
according to the scheme in Table 11.7. A party that
experienced only one minor purge in 1953 would thus be
scored 1 for the first half of our period; one that
experienced a major purge in 1958 and another in 1959 would
be scored 3 for the second half.

TABLE 11.7 Scheme for Coding
Purges

Frequency of Purge
Events

Magnitude of Purge

Minor:
10% of Membership or 25% of Leadership
Group

Major:
More Than 25% of Membership or More Than 33% of
Leadership

No purge in either time period

0

0

One purge

1

2

Two purges

2

3

Three or more purges

3

4

Coding Results. From several
standpoints, BV1006 proved to be the least satisfactory
variable in the entire study. First, there was the problem
of determining the proper classification for "party purges"
within the conceptual framework. It was considered initially
as a technique of party discipline and therefore a candidate
indicator of "centralization of power." Considerable
ambivalence accompanied its location under "coherence."
Second, the variable was originally conceptualized without
incorporating the requirement of mass expulsion or
exclusion from the party, but this led to identifying as
purges virtually any attempt to promote party discipline by
expelling individual members for deviation from party
policy. The operational definition of that conceptualization
led to high scores and left coders with the nagging thought
that many parties which probably also expelled members
escaped detection for purges because the literature did not
trouble to report expulsions in detail. Finally, the
reconceptualization and new oper-